Captain America writers say the sequel will be “primarily set in the modern day”

October 23, 2011 - By Liam Goodwin

Back in AprilCaptain America: The First Avenger screenwriters Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus said the setting of the sequel was still undecided, and they potentially have “two entire timelines to play with.”

With Steve Rogers ending up in the modern world towards the end of the film, and his appearance in The Avengers next year, a sequel set in the present seemed the likely scenario, and in a new interview the writers confirmed Captain America 2 will be “primarily set in the modern day”.

SM – I think it’s safe for us to say that it’s primarily set in the modern day. That seems to have been the biggest question people have been wondering about regarding the sequel. Most people know the story of Captain America as the story of this man out of time, and because The Avengers is such a big movie, and because [Avengers director] Joss Whedon has so many moving pieces, we’ve been left with room to explore Cap entering the modern day wondering, “What is all this? What’s happened to the world” and so on.

CM – We made a movie where the world was in context for Steve Rogers. It was a movie where it was a more pure time, where there were clearly black-and-white, right-and-wrong, good-and-evil scenarios. And Cap is a guy who symbolizes that. Now he’s in the now, and there is nothing black-and-white. So what do you do with that guy? How does he react to a much more uncertain time? So you’re given this huge new palate to work with, but you can keep him the same.

And that’s the fun of getting to do a sequel. Captain America, Steve Rogers, he’s pretty firmly established. Now we can take him through some different places.

Chris Evans recently said we are unlikely to see the next film until at least 2014, given that Marvel has Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 set for 2013. Fans will still see Captain America next summer though, and it’ll give us a chance to see the character interact with the modern world, which he’ll probably remain in for the foreseeable future.